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“There Is No Outside”: Identity, Voice, and the Rewriting of Nature in Contemporary Environmental Thought

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“There Is No Outside”: Identity, Voice, and the Rewriting of Nature in Contemporary Environmental Thought

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This project argues that contemporary environmental writers such as Tommy Pico, Lucille Clifton, and Bill Devall reject the traditional divide between nature and culture, instead revealing how environmental identity is inseparable from social history, political power, and cultural voice. These authors show that "environment" is not an abstract wilderness but a lived, embodied space—one shaped by race, language, colonialism, and ecology. Their work, alongside modern media and activist discourse, illustrates a shift from environmental reverence to environmental justice, blending poetics with politics to redefine who speaks for nature and what it means to belong to it.

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1 “Nature, I Hate You”: Satire and Resistance in Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem

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1 “Nature, I Hate You”: Satire and Resistance in Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem

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Tommy Pico opens Nature Poem by rejecting the very genre he’s writing in: “I can’t write a nature poem b/c it’s fodder for the noble savage narrative” (Pico 5). This line satirizes how mainstream environmental literature often excludes Indigenous voices or traps them in romanticized tropes. Pico uses humor and fragmentation as formal strategies to deconstruct both colonial ideas of nature and the expectation that Indigenous people only write in harmony with it. By mocking the “nature poem,” Pico critiques both the genre and the systems that idealize land while erasing the people tied to it. His voice—a queer, urban, Indigenous speaker—transforms nature into a space of contested representation, not quiet reflection.

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2 The Killing of More Than Trees: Language Loss and Cultural Violence in Lucille Clifton

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2 The Killing of More Than Trees: Language Loss and Cultural Violence in Lucille Clifton

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In “the killing of the trees,” Lucille Clifton writes, “they have cut down the trees / and you can see the sky” (Clifton). At first, this might seem like a vision of openness or possibility. But Clifton’s sparse syntax and enjambment make it clear: what’s exposed is not beauty, but loss. The absence of trees reflects deeper erasures—of culture, land, and voice. Her environmental protest is subtle yet scathing, blending the ecological with the political. Like endangered languages, the silencing of trees in Clifton’s poem becomes a metaphor for the silencing of entire communities. It’s a reminder that environmental harm often targets both the land and those rooted in it.

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3 Finding the Ecological Self: Devall’s Deep Ecology and Its Limits

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3 Finding the Ecological Self: Devall’s Deep Ecology and Its Limits

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In The Ecological Self, Bill Devall explores identity through a lens of interconnectedness: “To cultivate ecological consciousness is to expand the self to include the nonhuman world” (Devall 113). His work grounds itself in deep ecology, arguing that environmental ethics must dissolve the boundary between self and nature. However, Devall’s concept of the “self” leans toward a universalizing perspective that can unintentionally obscure differences of race, class, and colonization. While his intention is a radical shift in consciousness, his framework often omits the social structures that shape one’s access to nature. Comparing this to Tommy Pico’s refusal to universalize the land reveals a tension between spiritual unity and material disparity in environmental thought.

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4 Colonial Stereotypes and Climate Silence

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4 Colonial Stereotypes and Climate Silence

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The UCS blog argues that Native American communities are frequently flattened into ahistorical caricatures—either as "noble savages" or as completely invisible in contemporary environmental discourse. These representations aren't just inaccurate—they are politically harmful. As the article states, “These stereotypes allow environmental destruction to proceed without meaningful consultation with Indigenous peoples.” Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem directly confronts this issue through satire and resistance. He writes, “I can’t write a nature poem bc it’s cute / and I’m reclaiming my right to be / loud and complex and angry and beautiful” (Pico 19). In this moment, Pico rejects the assumption that Indigenous expression must be peaceful and pastoral. His speaker refuses to be sanitized or tokenized. Throughout the poem, Pico returns to this tension: “I know nature / I know her / as a violent force.” His intimacy with land is not mystical—it’s lived, urban, and shaped by violence. This aligns with the blog’s critique of how settler environmentalism both erases Native land rights and co-opts Indigenous identity. Pico’s form—fragmented, nonlinear, pop-culture-infused—becomes a counter-map to dominant narratives of nature, asserting that environmental justice must also be narrative justice.

Source:

https://blog.ucs.org/science-blogger/native-american-stereotyping-contributes-to-climate-change/

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protest image of Indigenous climate activists

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5 “Silent Spring” and the Politics of the Ecological Self

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5 “Silent Spring” and the Politics of the Ecological Self

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The Harvard article commemorates Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring for launching modern environmentalism by spotlighting the dangers of DDT and other pesticides. It praises her ability to merge science with ethical urgency, writing that Carson showed “public health and ecology are inseparable.” Bill Devall, in The Ecological Self, would agree on the need to reconceptualize human identity within the environment. He writes, “To realize the ecological self is to identify with all living beings, to experience the pain of others as one’s own” (Devall 126). Yet where Carson’s activism is rooted in direct, observable harm—bird deaths, cancer rates—Devall’s framework leans philosophical. He envisions a “transpersonal ecology” that transcends individual concerns. This can be enlightening, but also limiting. Carson, as the article notes, “was attacked for stepping outside of her gendered role and into scientific critique.” Her specificity—her body, her gender, her historical moment—mattered. Devall’s vision of a universal “self” risks washing over the particular voices that make environmentalism accountable. If we “become” the forest, but ignore who has been excluded from it, then we repeat the very erasures Carson and later environmental justice movements seek to correct.

Source:

60 years later, ‘Silent Spring’ is still relevant to ecological health

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6 Endangered Languages, Endangered Trees

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6 Endangered Languages, Endangered Trees

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The New York Times article describes how NYC is home to hundreds of endangered languages, many spoken by Indigenous, immigrant, and refugee communities. It notes that language is more than communication—it’s “a way of seeing the world, shaped by generations of interaction with place.” This insight echoes Lucille Clifton’s poem “the killing of the trees,” which on the surface mourns ecological destruction, but also reads as a metaphor for cultural erasure. Clifton writes: “they have cut down the trees / and you can see the sky / oh god / oh god.” The shift from description to lament dramatizes the loss not just of trees, but of rootedness—of a cultural landscape now exposed, emptied. Her sparse form mirrors the stripped forest: bare, open, vulnerable. Just as the NYT piece warns that “once a language dies, an entire worldview vanishes,” Clifton’s poem recognizes the layered violence of environmental harm. Trees fall, but so do the people and traditions bound to them. Both texts insist that ecological grief is cultural grief. In this light, Clifton’s environmental protest is also an anti-colonial one—resisting the idea that exposure equals progress and that loss can be redeemed through visibility.

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/22/magazine/endangered-languages-nyc.html

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Connects to 4 & 6

The environmental justice paradigm argues that environmental degradation is inseparable from racial, economic, and cultural inequality. It critiques the whiteness and classism of traditional environmentalism, which often centers wilderness preservation over human survival. In Nature Poem, Tommy Pico writes, “It’s not that I hate nature. / It’s that I hate how you see me in nature” (Pico 45). This single line cuts to the heart of environmental justice: how stereotypes about who belongs in “nature” erase Indigenous people from the present. Likewise, Lucille Clifton’s poem “the killing of the trees” laments more than deforestation—it mourns cultural devastation. The repeated line “oh god / oh god” (Clifton) is raw and stripped down, echoing the stripped forest and the bare emotion of loss. These works challenge the false neutrality of environmental harm. Environmental injustice, they show, is not just about toxins or trees—it’s about who is allowed to define what counts as “natural” and whose grief is legible in that definition.

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8 Intellectual Lineage: Deep Ecology and Its Critics

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8 Intellectual Lineage: Deep Ecology and Its Critics

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Connects to 5

Deep ecology, articulated by Arne Naess and developed by Bill Devall, asks humans to identify with nature rather than dominate it. In The Ecological Self, Devall explains that “ecological consciousness is the expansion of the self to include the nonhuman world” (Devall 127). This framing is revolutionary in its ethics, yet it has limitations. Its emphasis on transcendence can obscure the specific social and political contexts of ecological harm. For example, while Devall calls for “biospheric egalitarianism,” he rarely acknowledges how systemic oppression shapes who gets harmed first. Compare this with Rachel Carson’s concrete warnings: “In nature nothing exists alone” (Silent Spring), she wrote, describing how chemicals enter the body through contaminated air, water, and food. Carson’s impact stemmed from her ability to link nature’s disruption directly to human suffering—especially women’s and children’s health. Devall’s universal “Self” might promote empathy, but Carson’s work demonstrates that without specificity and accountability, even the most spiritual environmentalism may fail to protect the most vulnerable.

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9 Political Context: Colonialism and Land Erasure

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9 Political Context: Colonialism and Land Erasure

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Connects to 4 & 6

The colonial project in the U.S. involved both land theft and cultural violence. This is central to understanding Nature Poem and “the killing of the trees.” The UCS blog argues that “Native Americans are seen as relics of the past,” which justifies ignoring their present-day land rights and environmental leadership. Pico parodies this “relic” image when he writes, “you want me to write a nature poem / so you can feel something / not real but real to you” (Pico 21). His speaker knows he is being consumed for settler nostalgia. Similarly, Clifton’s poem’s minimalism becomes a formal protest against forgetting. She doesn’t explain or justify the grief: “they have cut down the trees… oh god” (Clifton). The ellipses between lines hold silence, a silence linked to colonial violence and historical erasure. Both texts speak into those silences, reminding us that environmental destruction is never “just” about land—it is about sovereignty, memory, and cultural survival.

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10 Scientific Framing: Public Health and Environmentalism

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10 Scientific Framing: Public Health and Environmentalism

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Connects to 5

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring revolutionized public discourse by tying ecological destruction to human health, particularly through the metaphor of poisoning. She wrote, “We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair” (Silent Spring). This metaphor positions environmentalism as an ethical and political crossroads, not just a scientific debate. In contrast, Devall’s Ecological Self sees nature as a field of identification: “When the self is expanded to include the environment, harm to nature becomes harm to the self” (Devall 130). This philosophical approach can inspire compassion, but Carson’s public health focus offers something Devall lacks: concrete political stakes. The Harvard article notes that Carson’s work “galvanized policy change,” and that she “made science personal.” This precision grounds ecological grief in lived bodies—especially those most exposed to environmental harm. Carson’s work and Devall’s philosophy converge in their reverence for nature, but only one demands systemic intervention.

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11  Bridging Pico and Clifton: Nature as Grief and Refusal

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11  Bridging Pico and Clifton: Nature as Grief and Refusal

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Connects 4 & 6

Though writing from different cultural traditions, Tommy Pico and Lucille Clifton both use environmental language as a form of resistance—not to glorify nature but to mourn what has been stolen and to critique the assumptions behind what we call “nature.” In Nature Poem, Pico writes: “I’m tired of seeing the word ‘spiritual’ used to describe me. I’m tired of forests, I’m tired of goats” (Pico 37). His frustration exposes how settler eco-romanticism flattens Indigenous identity. Clifton, in her sparse and solemn “the killing of the trees,” strips even punctuation from her poem to reflect the rawness of loss: “they have cut down the trees / oh god / oh god” (Clifton). Where Pico names the violence of being aestheticized, Clifton names the violence of erasure itself. Both poets deny the reader comfort. Their stylistic choices—Pico’s fragmented, anti-linear form and Clifton’s stark brevity—resist being neatly folded into dominant environmental narratives that exclude grief, survival, and cultural memory. Their work demands an ethics of listening, not consuming.

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12 Bridging Devall and Pico: Identity and the Ecological Self

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12 Bridging Devall and Pico: Identity and the Ecological Self

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Connects 4 & 5

At first glance, Tommy Pico and Bill Devall seem ideologically distant—Devall envisions a universal “ecological self,” while Pico resists being essentialized by others' ideas of nature. But read together, they expose a tension in environmental thought: is identity something to expand or something to protect? Devall writes, “We need to see ourselves not as apart from the natural world, but as a part of it” (Devall 132). Pico echoes this in his own way, when he writes, “I do love a tree. I do love a bird. I just don’t want to write a nature poem that makes me a casualty of your guilt” (Pico 56). Both authors point to connection—but Pico insists that connection must be chosen and politicized. Devall’s “oneness” can feel abstract, while Pico insists on rootedness in tribal specificity. If Devall’s self is dissolved into the ecosystem, Pico’s self insists on sovereignty. These divergent strategies underscore my argument: environmental writing often balances expansive belonging with the need for cultural and political specificity.

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Connects 2 & 6

Language is not just a human technology—it is an ecological practice. The New York Times article on endangered languages in New York City notes that “language loss often precedes land loss,” especially for Indigenous and diasporic communities. Lucille Clifton’s “the killing of the trees” is written in a kind of distilled syntax that mirrors this fragility. Her poem uses no capital letters, minimal punctuation, and only ten words total: “they have cut down the trees / oh god / oh god” (Clifton). The poem’s grammar is not broken—it is bearing witness. The trees here are more than flora; they represent histories, kinships, and vocabularies that have been severed. The NYT article documents this too: “When a language dies, a world dies with it.” Clifton’s poem becomes a linguistic echo of ecological loss. In both texts, environmental violence is not just deforestation or extinction—it is the silencing of voices that once named, shaped, and stewarded the land.

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Connects 6, 9, & 13

One of the most haunting aspects of environmental representation across your project is the theme of 'intergenerational silence'—what is not passed down, what is erased, what is remembered only in fragments. In Nature Poem, Pico writes, “It’s not my nature to be mystical. / It’s my nature to survive” (Pico 14), drawing a line between survival and forced silence. Lucille Clifton, meanwhile, offers no exposition in “the killing of the trees”—just grief. This choice resonates with the NYT article, which reveals that many endangered languages are passed down orally and often lost within a single generation: “Sometimes a whole language exists in the mind of a single elder.” These silences are political. They are the aftermath of colonialism, racism, and displacement. By putting these texts in conversation, we see that what is mourned is not only environmental—it is linguistic, cultural, and familial. Voice, in environmental literature, is always tied to what has been violently taken and what people fight to preserve.

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15 Environmental Writing as Cultural Survival

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15 Environmental Writing as Cultural Survival

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Environmental writing in the U.S. is often framed as either romantic celebration or political alarm. But this binary fails to capture the nuanced work of authors like Tommy Pico, Lucille Clifton, and Bill Devall, who use environmental discourse to stage more intimate questions of cultural survival, identity, and loss. Across their writing, nature is not just a setting—it is a contested space that shapes and reflects belonging. Nature Poem resists white eco-romanticism by reclaiming Native sovereignty and language. “The killing of the trees” grieves ecological and linguistic erasure in the Black diaspora. The Ecological Self calls for a radical redefinition of the self as interconnected and embedded. These authors show that environmental literature is never apolitical—it is always entangled with who gets to speak, survive, and be remembered. In the 21st century, as climate change disproportionately affects marginalized communities, literature becomes a tool not just for warning, but for remembering and resisting. Environmental writing, at its most powerful, becomes a form of cultural continuation.

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16 Synthesis: Rewilding Identity Across Texts

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16 Synthesis: Rewilding Identity Across Texts

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Across all of these sources—literary and nonliterary alike—a shared goal emerges: to “rewild” identity. This rewilding doesn’t mean returning to a pristine past, but rather resisting colonial, extractive, and homogenizing systems that simplify both people and land. Pico writes, “Don’t look at me like I’m a monument. I’m still learning my own language” (Pico 66). Clifton grieves what was lost—trees, words, histories—but refuses to explain: “oh god / oh god” (Clifton). Devall envisions a deep self “as wide as the biosphere” (Devall 130), but overall these texts suggest that deep ecology must also make space for historical trauma and survival. Together with the NYT piece on endangered languages, the UCS post on Native stereotyping, and the Silent Spring retrospective, I have chosen to argue for an environmental imagination rooted not in purity or wilderness, but in complexity and justice. This is the future of environmental literature—plural, resistant, and deeply alive.

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Clifton, Lucille. “the killing of the trees.” The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010, edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser, BOA Editions, 2012, p. 197.

Devall, Bill, and George Sessions. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Gibbs Smith, 1985.

Pico, Tommy. Nature Poem. Tin House Books, 2017.

“Endangered Languages in New York City.” The New York Times, 22 Feb. 2024, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/22/magazine/endangered-languages-nyc.html.

Green, Victoria. “Native American Stereotyping Contributes to Climate Change.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 15 Nov. 2021, blog.ucsusa.org/science-blogger/native-american-stereotyping-contributes-to-climate-change/.

Whitaker, Barbara. “Silent Spring at 60 Holds Powerful Lessons for Public Health.” Harvard Public Health, 28 Sept. 2022, harvardpublichealth.org/environmental-health/silent-spring-at-60-holds-powerful-lessons-for-public-health/.